


Stormchasing

by sinelanguage



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Action/Adventure, Handcuffed Together, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Slow Burn, pre-season two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-20 02:30:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7387033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinelanguage/pseuds/sinelanguage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This isn’t how Lance intended to spend his vacation, chasing after Keith’s premonitions. But here he is, and he’s one hundred percent blaming Keith for all the trouble they’re about to get into. Keith makes bad decision, Lance makes mistakes, and both of them are stuck together on a space pirate adventure neither of them asked for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stormchasing

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Frey, for reading this over, and Stella and Nicole, for putting up with me yelling always about writing this fic.

Lance broke the two main rules of the mission before they’d been on the planet for two hours. Granted, Keith and broken the two main rules _first_ , but no one, other than Lance himself, was going to care about the order. Keith probably wouldn’t even care about the order, even if it was in his favor. And it wasn’t, Lance was sure of that.

After so many accounts of the castle ship’s ten-thousand-year-old planetary map leading them into life-threatening situations due to incorrect information, the team had decided they needed to update the maps. This lead them to a trading planet on the edge of Galra control, where Allura claimed they had the best shot of finding someone to update their information. It wasn’t the smartest move to use old maps to find a place to get new maps, but it was the best shot they had. Lance wasn’t going to argue about that _too_ much.

When they landed, Allura had stated, evenly, that they Shiro, Pidge and her would find someone to update the map, while everyone else had the day off to explore the shops and posts. She gave them a list of rules of diplomatic importance, explaining the nuances of the trading post and how they should behave, mostly summing down to “don’t turn off your communicator” and “don’t try to get into trouble.”

Lance, with his communicator turned off and sneaking around a space pirate ship with little stealth, realized that this was probably a bad idea and exactly the kind of trouble Allura warned about. Actually, he had little doubt this was a bad idea; he just didn’t have an estimate on the depths of how bad this idea went.

He also knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that this bad idea was all Keith’s fault.

 

* * *

 

Before, he and Hunk were going to scope out the marketplace for some actually decent, preferably fried, food, but plans changed as he’d noticed Keith stalking off in a direction away from food and toward inevitable trouble at the outer rim of the marketplace.

Allura had told them outside the center of the market was off-limits, for good reason. Outside the center of the marketplace, as the shops thinned out, was a group of what Lance could only assume to be black-market traders, or space bandits, or pirates. Their ships were worn and bulleted and their shops filled with beat-up parts with un-explainable origins.

And, despite all prior warnings, that was where Keith was heading.

Curiosity bubbled, and maybe concern as well, even though Lance wouldn’t admit that. Keith had a track record for running into things on his own; Lance thought that maybe fighting Zarkon alone would have tempered this, but apparently not. Here he was, sneaking off toward a suspicious black market ship, and here Lance was, following him.

Lance didn’t want to admit to being as worried then as he was now, but following Keith wasn’t exactly admitting to anything.

Keith had done a decent job of looking inconspicuous, keeping his head down and moving quickly only when attention was divided away. Maybe it was from experience- Keith had a conspiracy wall in his mystery shack and he had to get the info from somewhere. As much as he tried, Lance couldn’t quite copy Keith’s stealth. He had presence when he shouldn’t and no presence when he should, making him stick out like a sore thumb. It probably made him stick out like a _target._

Lance should’ve been grateful that Keith spotted him first, and not one of the traders, but he wasn’t. He hadn’t even noticed Keith sneaking up on him, and he jumped out of his skin when Keith touched his arm, falling into the ship behind it.

“Lance,” Keith said, “What are you _doing_ here?”

Pot calling the kettle black, really. “Me? What about _you_? Allura said not to go to the edges of the market-”

“-I think there’s something going on here-”

“Yes! There is!” Lance said, struggling to keep quiet. “Which is why we should _avoid it_. We’re just here for the map thing.”

Keith stared at him, determined look stubborn and clear, “There’s something going on here. I saw what they were trading in the market-”

“So you just decided to sneak off and figure it out _yourself,”_ Lance rolled his eyes, leaning against the ship.

“-they were selling ship parts. From Earth, probably from the Kerberos mission, since it was the furthest out,” Keith said, and Lance stared, gobsmacked, “So I decided to figure it out.”

Lance couldn’t argue with that, no matter how much he wanted to. Keith got a moment of victory until Lance recovered, “Dude- that’s- you know what, my point still stands! Why’d you go off on your own- you should tell Shiro- and Pidge!-”

“I saw it from a distance!” Keith had started walking away from him, stomps reverberating off the ground.

Lance followed him, “You said you knew for sure!”

“To get you _off my back,_ ” Keith said. “I’ll go check it out, get back to camp, and tell you what’s there.”

“What? No way! You’re not ditching me,” Lance had caught up to Keith, keeping up with his storming pace. “I’ll check it out with you, and _then_ we’ll get back to camp.”

Keith stopped, Lance still barreling forward; when he noticed Keith was no longer beside him, he turned as dramatically as he could on the heel of his foot and looked back at Keith.

“Fine!” Keith said. “You’re causing a _scene_.”

Lance wanted to bark back that _so was Keith,_ but looking around him, the black-market traders had turned from ignorant to curious. Some glared at the two of them, others pretended not to notice but remained close enough to listen in.

Taking Lance’s silence as agreement, Keith continued forward, ignoring Lance behind him. The traders Keith had been searching for turned out not to be too far from them, only a couple more stalls. Seeing it, Lance was beginning to buy into the idea that something was off. Calling it a black market ship may have been an understatement.

The ship, sleek and covered with black fiberglass, was built more for attacking than for evading. Red, alien writing scrawled across its hull, dripping down its side as if the ship had taken off before the paint dried. Lance could make out the well-concealed seams of hidden lasers on the side of its hull, like the cannons of a pirate ship. This wasn’t just a trading ship, it was a pirate ship, and a big one at that.

Keith had already snuck toward the ship, motioning Lance forward with a lift of his chin. Lance looked behind him, to make sure the coast was clear, then inched forward until both he and Keith were flush against the ship.

“There should be a hatch close by,” Keith said, “I’ll get inside the ship to check the cargo, you stand watch. Turn off your comm, too, I think they have something set up to intercept it.”

Lance grumbled, ignored the weary feeling in the pit of his stomach, and turned off his communicator. The static noise died in his hands, and he shoved it into his coat pocket.

By the time Lance had turned off his comm, Keith had opened the ship hatch and disappeared into its depths. Nervous, Lance bounced on the balls of his feet and waited.

He wasn’t very good at _waiting,_ but fortunately and unfortunately, he didn’t have to wait very long.

At the edge of the black market, Lance could see a pair approaching fast, eyes on the ship Lance leaned on. One of them dragged cargo behind them, the bin filled to the brim. That had to be them, and they didn’t look happy.

Lance elbowed the side of the ship, in a pattern Lance hoped conveyed _panic_ and _retreat_.

The hatch opened, Keith looking at Lance, then the horizon, then pulling the both of them to the other side of the ship.

“Alright, we had our fun, it’s time to get back-” Lance said, and Keith shook his head.

“They still had cargo-”

“-you checked the cargo!” Lance knew Keith was right, though, he’d seen the bin behind them that must’ve been from the market place.

“The other cargo,” Keith said, “You saw it too, right?”

Lance’s silence answered that for him.

“Stay here,” Keith said, and before Lance could protest, he’d stepped away from their hiding place on the far side of the ship.

“Keith, _Keith,_ ” Lance hissed, “Get back here! _Keith!_ ”

He watched, as Keith left, only knowing he’d met the pirates when he could hear their not-so-hushed talking.

“You’re the kid from the marketplace,” said what Lance could assume was the trader-pirate-alien.

“I saw what you were selling,” Keith said. “Where did you get it?”

The pirate snorted, “We traded for it. Where else do _traders_ get things?”

Lance didn’t buy the trader thing for a _second_ , but it wasn’t like that even mattered, now.

“Where did you _get it._ ” Keith said. He sounded like he did right when he was about to fall off the edge of a bad decision, anger bubbling over rational action.

Lance took a moment to contemplate how bad this idea was, then inched forward again, trying to spot Keith. As Lance suspected, Keith argued animatedly and pointed to the cargo bin Lance had seen the pirates pull up with.

“Unless you have something worthwhile, you’re not going to find out where I traded _anything,_ ” said the pirate. Lance still couldn’t see the pirates at this angle, only two long shadows, but the voice sounded bored but with an impatient edge, annoyance threatening to spill.

Lance watched as Keith bristled, accusatory finger pointed at the pirate, “You couldn’t have bought that! It’s from Earth, from a mission that- there’s no way-”

“-you’re in no position to bargain,” snapped the pirate. Lance could just make out a thin, leathery finger pointing in Keith’s face, mimicking his earlier motion.

Keith reached to his pocket, probably for his bayard, but stopped as he looked to where Lance was hiding. As Lance motioned “stop” in as many ways as he could- fingers across the neck, thumbs down, an x made out of his hands, double thumbs down- Keith turned and ignored him, pointing back at the alien space pirate.

Throughout his motions, Lance had failed to notice the sound of footsteps from the other side of the ship, and one less pirate shadow on the ground. He didn’t notice anything wrong until an extra shadow, cast from behind him, came into view, its tall frame dwarfing his own shadow.

“Stand still,” Lance heard from behind him, before he could turn around. Something cold pressed to the back of his neck, and when he tried to flail forward to avoid it, a thin hand grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back and away from his hiding place.

“Put down your weapon,” said the pirate behind Lance. She shoved him forward, enough to offset him but not enough for Lance to put any distance between him and whatever was on the back of his neck.

Watching as Keith’s face paled, expression quickly moving from shock to familiar anger, Lance waited for an accusation that never came. Instead of yelling, Keith gaped, gaze switching between the pirates and Lance and the pirates again.

Keith hadn’t backed down, as the pirate had asked. Instead he tightened the grip on his bayard, looking to Lance with his mouth open.

Whatever Keith was thinking to say, Lance never heard; before Keith could speak, something jabbed Lance in the back of the neck, and just after he heard himself scream, he was out.

 

* * *

 

The first thing Lance heard when he came to was a loud slam, its metallic cling reverberating long after the initial noise. It eventually settled down, until the only noise he heard was someone else breathing.

“Uhh-ngh?” said Lance, attempt at speech failing as he tried to blink awake. Surroundings filled in around him- mostly just blurry and dark reflections on a shiny surface, everything keeping fuzzy and indiscernible. Alarmingly, while he could feel the cold floor or wherever he was, he couldn’t feel the tips of his fingers. The back of his neck hurt, too, a dull pain that he couldn’t quite ignore.

Lance jerked his arm as soon as he comprehended that fact, flinging around wildly in every direction possible. The feeling in his fingers wasn’t gone completely, at the least, but his wild movements earned a squawk from whoever he was in the room with.

“Hey- hey! Stop moving-” Keith, it was definitely Keith, said, and he sounded as pleased as he ever did, “-you’re going to knock me over.”

“What’s going _on_ , where are we,” Lance said rapidly, glancing around at whatever he could see; only a faint yellow glow lit the room, which looked cramped and dark otherwise, “why can’t I feel my fingers, where’s everyone else-”

Keith answered none of his questions. Instead, he shoved a hand over Lance’s mouth, stopping any further questions. He was giving Lance a Look, brows furrowed but frown teetering on a wince, and Lance couldn’t quite figure it out.

Swallowing, Lance bit back the urge to literally bite back at Keith, instead glancing around the room again for the light source. It was still faint, and yellow, but brighter than before, as it was right in front of his face, on Keith’s wrist.

He’d seen that light before; he’d been tied to a tree by that light before. A sense of dread formed in the pit of his stomach as he followed the light chain. It started at Keith’s wrist and ended at his own- of course. _Of course._

Taking advantage of the situation as he could, Lance jerked his arm again, dislodging Keith’s hand.

“What,” Lance hissed under his breath, gesturing wildly with his free hand to the handcuff light between them, “What? _What._ ”

He ignored his own voice as it cracked in the middle of his third accusatory what.

“We got captured,” Keith said in a whisper- so whispering was alright, nice to know- “By space pirates.”

Lance blinked, trying to remember the chunk of context he was missing. It was definitely space pirates, but he hadn’t particularly wanted to seek out space pirates, not after being tied to a tree by aliens before. Admittedly, his fault that time, but this time was yet to be determined.

“Wait wait _wait_ ,” Lance whispered, accusations forming before his memory fully did. “I- didn’t you think the space pirates were up to something? This is _your_ fault! I was just going to stay out of the way, enjoy my vacation-”

“-you followed me!” Keith hissed back; he was struggling to whisper. “You followed me and blew my cover.”

“Oh, sure, because you were sneaking onto someone else’s ship,” Lance said, gesturing wildly and causing Keith to stumble. “While we were at a sketchy _space base_.”  

“I was handling it! You saw what they had,” Keith said, any trace of a whisper gone, “I couldn’t leave that alone!”

“I didn’t see anything! I didn’t see anything because _you wouldn’t let me,_ and I don’t really buy there was anything there to begin with!” Lance yelled.

Keith glared at him; Lance could tell, even in the little light they had.

“It doesn’t even matter if they had anything, you would’ve been captured even if I didn’t follow you! Or worse!”

“I could’ve taken them-” Keith started.

Lance snorted, “Uh-huh, sure, okay buddy, they had a _pirate ship._ ”

“-if you _hadn’t been there,_ ” Keith had gone from talking to yelling, too, hand pulling at the handcuff between them viciously.

“They had canons!” Lance flung his arms around again in an empty attempt at emphasis. He pointedly ignored Keith’s last comment.

“If you’d just- not come _along_ ,” Keith said, “You wouldn’t have been _captured_ and used as a bargaining chip! I...”

Lance huffed, pulling at the handcuff and hoping the sudden jerk hurt.

“Even _if_ I got caught, I’d have at least been caught _alone._ It would be better if you weren’t here,” Keith said, his voice lower again, “I... you got _hurt._ ”

Lance opened his mouth to protest, but Keith cut him off.

“Do you really think it’s better that I’m _stuck with you_?” Keith asked, with a pull of his arm to the chain between them.

“Yes, it’s better!” Lance said, voice cracking. “Of course it is!”

If Keith wanted to argue more, Lance didn’t hear it. He bit his tongue trying to think of anymore insults to throw Keith’s way, wanting to pretend he wasn’t stuck on how Keith had said _stuck with you_ with as much derision as he did.

Before he could think of a response, something knocking on the ceiling, startlingly them both, “Quit fighting in there, do you want a guard to come in again?”

Keith gestured to Lance with a finger over his mouth and a not-so-gentle shush, then watched him as if to make sure he actually followed.

Silence fell between them; Lance pushed himself off the ground, trying to use his handcuffed arm as little as possible. He leaned against the wall, stewing in Keith’s remarks. It’s not like he wanted to be stuck here, either, but he wasn’t a burden like Keith seemed to think. He’d made the right call of _get out of there,_ after all, even if Keith hadn’t.

Or, _maybe_ he made the right call. He hadn’t know, nor will he ever find out.

As Lance stewed, Keith tried to quietly but unsubtly get his attention by pulling at the handcuff, but Lance ignored him. Eventually, Keith huffed, apparently giving up on gaining Lance’s attention.

After many grumbles and huffs directed in Keith’s general direction, Lance calmed down, and decided to take in his surroundings now that he had a better bearing on himself.

There wasn’t much more to learn, however; cramped and dark could easily sum up their tiny cell, which was short enough Lance probably couldn’t even stand in it and not even wide enough for him to stretch his legs across the room. There wasn’t any sign of a door, either, just markings on the ceiling Lance could only assume was a hatch the dropped them in.

Satisfied with his look around the cell, Lance glanced over at Keith- he had also leaned against the wall, as far away from Lance as the handcuff would let him. He stared at the ceiling, frown-wince now a full-grown grimace.

Silence continued, and Lance fidgeted, tapping his fingers against the floor and his leg against the opposite. Keith may or may not be glaring at him for that, but Lance refused to look over again, and it’s not like he could sit still and quiet.

After another few minutes of Schroedinger’s glare, Keith whispered, “Quit moving your leg, it’s obnoxious.”

“Nope, not going to stop,” Lance said, thankful for the breach of the silence, “I’m assuming you have a plan- we’re not _really_ going to sit here and wait for someone to rescue us.”

“The only way out’s the hatch, it’s sealed from the outside, probably electromagnetically,” Keith said, “Air vents aren’t big enough to get out. They have a separate hatch for bringing us food, also not small enough to get out of.”

That was grim. “So you don’t have a plan.”

No response; he didn’t have one but wasn’t willing to admit it.

Lance groaned loudly and dramatically, leaning back against the wall. Keith shushed him again, still loudly and unsubtly. Rolling his eyes, Lance looked at the hatch again, then Keith, and then the hatch.

That was their only way out, and the guard _had_ said something about having someone come in their if they made enough noise. Keith was going to regret doubting the benefits of getting stuck with _him._ Lance pulled at his wrist, until Keith looked over to hiss at him again, then smiled wide. Keith looked shocked and caught off-guard by Lance’s look.

“Oh, so you wanna fight?” Lance said; good fighting words. Keith furrowed his eyebrows, still looking lost and maybe even betrayed now. Well, maybe they were not-so-great fighting words.

Lance pointed between the two of them very rapidly, then gave three, enunciated points at the ceiling hatch, then finalized the plan by punching his palm with his fist.

Keith mouthed “what” at him, looking between the ceiling and Lance. Nothing seemed to dawn on his face, other than confusion and annoyance.

Still not getting it; a demonstration would have to do. Lance pulled back his arm, preparing a punch in Keith’s general direction, and swung. He missed and hit the wall, as he’d intended, but hadn’t pulled his punch enough, hitting the wall full-force.

Yelping, Lance fell back. He probably didn’t even need to actually punch him, just yell a lot, which he was good at.

“You- uh,” of all the times to forget how to insult, “-you stink! I can’t believe I’m handcuffed to you, you of all people-”

Keith, who had been mouthing more angry words at him, dove forward and clamped a hand over Lance’s mouth _again._ Lance pulled at his handcuff, but Keith had the foresight to use his non-cuffed hand this time.

“ _Stop it_ ,” Keith whispered, “Are you _trying_ to get the them to come back-”

Lance couldn’t nod, so instead, he bit Keith’s hand.

This time, Keith yelped, jostling backwards and landing with a thud against the floor. Before Lance could yell again- in fake or real anger, he wasn’t sure this time- the ceiling hatch opened, bright light filled the room, reflecting off the walls in an impossible to see in sheen.

“I told you to _stop fighting-_ ”

Using his handcuffed hand, Lance gestured to the ceiling, hoping that if Keith couldn’t see the motion he could feel it. He blinked rapidly, trying to adjust to the light and read Keith’s expression, which he was slowly recognizing as horrified.

He didn’t have the time to comprehend _why_ before something prodded at his shoulder, and he was howling. While he’d been alarmed at the job that the pirates had used to take him out, it had nothing on _this._ His limbs locked in place and he couldn’t move, even though he felt like he was vibrating out of his skin. Everything moved fast and slow around him; too slow for the pain to end, and too fast to pay attention.

Lance wasn’t sure when the pain had ended, only that it had, and someone was screaming at him to grab _on_ so he did, and felt himself being hoisted out of the cell and into the brightly-lit room above.

When he came back to his senses, Lance was lying on the ground, one arm losing feeling again. Keith, beside him, had a bundle of the guard’s clothes and shock staff at his side, the guard apparently dealt with. He had one arm on Lance’s side- the handcuffed one, which was odd. Lance figured the lack of feeling in his arm was because Keith’s handcuff pulled it enough to lose some blood flow, but that couldn’t be the case since the chain was slack.

Lance tried to smile and give a thumbs-up; Keith did not respond back, only staring in disbelief.

“That went well,” Lance said; he dropped his hand back to the ground, then gave the most pitiful groan of pain.

Keith stared him, eyes wide, wearing the wince-frown of before. “Sure it did.”

 

* * *

 

It took Lance a while before he was willing to sit up. The electrical shock to his shoulder hadn’t done him any good in the long run, and any sudden movement reminded him of the injury. He tried not to show it; he wasn’t going to let Keith know this bothered him so much. Luckily for him, the jostling out of the cell had moved his ripped sleeve to cover what he was sure was an obvious electrical burn.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Keith repeated, for what had to be the hundredth time. Or maybe just the third.

Lance fought the urge to roll his eyes, “I’m _fine,_ just put on the guard uniform already and let’s get out of here.”

Standing still when Keith tried to put on the guard’s clothes was difficult; he had to be still but follow Keith’s absurd and poorly-worded directions on how to move so the handcuff wasn’t in the way.

As Keith continued to tear at the uniform to fit it over his handcuffed arm, Lance also had to listen to Keith explain their situation in a frustratingly patronizing voice. They’d been captured by the space pirates of the ship apparently called the _Luck of the Draw_ , who had taken their stuff and held them for ransom. Then, they were transferred somewhere else off the original ship.

After he’d explained the situation, Keith continued with pointed remarks on how _that was a bad idea to get the guards in there,_  and _I was trying to tell you about the shock staffs they came in with them earlier,_ and _you almost got killed._

Granted; these were all true and fair complaints, but Lance couldn’t bother with any responses other than rolling his eyes, assuring it’s _fine_ he was _fine_ his shoulder was _fine,_ and making exaggerated frowny-faces.

“Why do _you_ get to wear the guard uniform?” Lance said, as Keith shoved his hands into a too-big glove. “I’m taller, and they’re gonna notice you had to fold your pant legs.”

“You have the worst poker face,” Keith said; Lance scrunched his nose in annoyance, before realizing he was making Keith’s point. “And I got the uniform. Finder’s keepers.”

Lance should protest this; he really should. But Keith had pulled him out of a cell, shoved the guard in, and stole his clothes; all Lance had done was yell and wriggle around on the ground. Maybe Keith was right about the holding him back, thing, after all.

“Sooo,” Lance said, changing topics as he’d lost that battle, “Where’s the exit to this place? I don’t really remember how we got here in the first place.”

Without a response from Keith, Lance continued, “I’ve been electrocuted, shoved in a cell, and handcuffed to _you,_ I’m going to call it a day and get out of here while we can.”

Something changed; while Keith was just non-responsive before, he bristled now, “We’re not _calling it a day,_ we’re still going to find the ship parts.”

“Eh,” Lance said, “We can just _tell everyone else_ -”

“With what? Our _comms?_ ” Keith said, motioning between them. “They took our jackets, and bayards, anything useful.”

“So we’re going to go _back_ to the pirates that captured us, instead of getting out of here-”

“We have to,” Keith continued. “They were selling ship parts, and they were definitely from Earth.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t just you know,” Lance said, “Space junk? We’ve been leaving stuff in space for _ever_ , it’s not surprising that someone would’ve pick it up eventually and think it’s useful.”

Doubt crossed Keith’s face, “It looked like pretty new stuff.”

Something was wrong; Lance could believe that the parts were _new_ , sure, but he was beginning to doubt that they were from Kerberos, or important at all. For once in his life, he didn’t want to argue the point; he wasn’t even sure if he was right, anyway.

“We’re getting out of here as soon as we find our comms,” Lance said. “And if we find your space junk along the way, we’ll take that too.”

 

* * *

 

Neither of them really had any idea where to go at first, just that they needed to get somewhere. Keith had trapped the guard inside their cell, and they had to leave before his yelling alerted someone else.

As Keith played guard, he lead Lance around, with his hands pinned behind his back. It was the best position, really; it hid the handcuff links and really drove home the “escorting a prisoner” plan, but it made it impossible to ignore the tingling from Lance’s shoulder to the tips of his fingers.

This was not an ideal situation. Not in the slightest.

Outside of his own discomfort, finding the ship parts may be a taller order than Lance anticipated; they weren’t on the ship they’d entered on. Lance already knew that, but he had figured the two of them had been locked in the underside of a different, but relatively small, pirate ship, as their confinement hadn’t exactly been _large._ They weren’t, though, and the size of their cage was apparently just for their discomfort, as the ship itself was massive.

The original ship Keith had been spying on couldn’t have fit the labyrinths of corridors and mazes of doors they found; the original ship had been _maybe_ the size of the castle.

This was a whole different beast entirely.

Keith steered Lance toward where everyone else was going. A fair plan, Lance would give him that, but it meant jostling around space pirates doing their space pirate things, as the both of them tried not to be suspicious.

Giving terrified glances around him, which probably fit their plan, Lance looked to where the pirates headed. At the end of one of the labyrinthine halls was a giant, metal door, hinges opening and closing automatically.  As they got closer, Lance realized it was an elevator, larger than any elevator he had ever seen.

At least Lance didn’t have to motion Keith in that direction; he saw it himself, jostling Lance until the two of them had entered the elevator.

Keith looked at the light-up buttons on the elevator control panel, then picked one, carefully pushing the button with the end of the shock staff while making sure not to jostle the cuffs. Lance could only assume the button was at random.

There weren’t very many other aliens in the elevator; there were three backed in the far corner, muttering to themselves, and one more insect-looking alien with fly-eyes covered in almost hilariously large goggles. At certain angles, the sheen off the goggles could hide the very large fly-eyes behind them, and Lance could at least try to pretend he wasn’t freaked out.

The tall insect alien had been glancing at the both of them for a while, but Lance had no idea what insect expressions looked like, so he didn’t know if he should feel threatened. Instead, he tried not to look over, watching the slow-moving floor counter with fake interest.

The elevator moved exhaustingly slowly. The door dinged open, and a couple more aliens joined the group, then it closed, to continue at its snail pace. To make matters worse, the insect alien had come over to them, evidently watching them the whole time.

“Hey, newbie,” said the alien Lance was trying not to look at. “Did you press express on this thing?”

Keith didn’t respond; Lance stepped on his foot.

“No,” Keith said. “I, uh, they didn’t tell me how.”

So much for Keith having the better poker face.

The insect gave a long-suffering sigh, “You’re a _guard._ You can use the express elevators, all the way to the _bridge,_ so we don’t have to deal with stops- just press your ID to the keypad.”

“Right,” Keith said, but still didn’t move his hands. While the handcuffs were hidden now, jostling around might show the chain, or the cuff, or any part of it, which would incriminate both of them. Even trying to move the shock staff to push the button again would reveal too much, and they’d be had.

“Here,” the insect said, plucking off one of the badges from Keith’s guard jacket and setting it on the control panel. “See? Not so hard.”

Lance couldn’t help it; he stared out-right at the alien insect now. Maybe they wouldn’t be so terrifying if he could understand insect expressions, but everything just looked like “on to them” to him.

“I have to take him to the pilots of the _Luck of the Draw_ ,” Keith said behind him, and Lance wanted to step on his foot again, “Do you know where…?”

“Oh, them? Nasty bunch,” came his response; great, perfect, “Flight’s in the hanger, last I heard. Pilots may be out in the scrapyard again, knowing them.”

As the insect had said, the elevator didn’t stop until at any of the other levels. Instead, it slowly ticked to the hanger, buttons lighting up as it did.

The insect, though, still appeared to want to make small talk.

“No idea what they’re calling a prisoner for,” he said, “Normally they’ll just keep ‘em in the cellars until they get their ransom pay. Unless you know something they want.”

The insect tilted his head, bug eyes focused on Lance, “You must be in for a treat.”

Lance froze, looking properly terrified. In the back of his mind, he congratulated himself on remaining so in character, even though the character was himself. The threat wasn’t even aimed for Keith, but his grip on Lance’s wrists tightened. Lance could even feel him hold his breath, only coming back moments later, jagged and uneven.

The elevator dinged, and the doors finally opened. “Well,” said the insect, with what Lance was sure was an insect grin, “Good luck finding them.”

 

* * *

 

If Lance wasn’t so terrified of being dragged around a pirate ship, he’d be amazed. The hanger was _huge_. The fact that the ship had elevators should’ve cued Lance on to how absolutely massive the place would be, but seeing the innards of the beast was something else entirely. It was a full freighter, lines of docking ports on the side of curved walls. The walls continued for stories, reaching a peak at the top; the outside probably looked like a zeppelin.

“Woah,” Lance said, and Keith poked his back, shushing him. Great.

Lance tried to meet Keith’s requirements for quietness, “So, this is like a space pirate bay? That’s pretty awesome- just need some weird looking reptile parrots, laser cannons, maybe a plank- a _space_ plank-”

“-how is that different from a _normal_ plank?”

“It’s in space,” Lance said. Keith huffed, breath hitting just behind Lance’s ear.

Lance couldn’t even focus on making his point; there was too much to look at, and too many _ships._ Some sleek and small, angles disappearing on impossibly curved edges. Others more like bricks, square, smelling thick of diesel, and amazingly able to fly. Then there was every variation in between, angular ships with curved cockpits and gaudy painted sides, speeders with only enough room for a pilot and a payload, massive freighters with thrusters the size of the speeders.

Two pilots landed in the bay with and folded together their ship’s solar sail with ease, and the ship seemed to shrink to a fraction of the size until it buzzed around like it was a speeder all along.

“Holy crow,” Lance said, mouth open. “Okay, I change my mind about this whole thing. Keith, this was a great idea- do you see _that one-”_

“-the solar sail? That one can’t go very fast in the air,” Keith countered. “And it probably has the worst control ever.”

Lance tried to elbow Keith. He wasn’t successful, and it kind of hurt, but it felt worth it.

“That one’s pretty good,” Keith said. Lance looked around; everything was at _least_ pretty good.

“I have no idea where you’re looking, and that describes, like, every ship here,” Lance said, “Except for maybe two.”

Keith sighed behind him, “The cruiser, on your left.”

Craning his neck, Lance could spot the ship; it looked like crap. What he could only describe as space gunk spattered on the dash, dripping down the sides. Even with a good cleaning, it probably wouldn’t improve. The painting cracked on the sides, the thrusters balanced unevenly, and the edges looked uneven and battered.

It levitated, Lance supposed. That was about all it had going for it.

“Congrats,” Lance said. “You found the one of two ships that’s _awful_. Irredeemable. The only two ships here- two!- that stink, were the brick of the freighter on your right, and yours. You have the _worst_ taste.”

“It’s reliable, and will actually _fly,_ unlike your solar sail,” Keith said, then stepped on the back of Lance’s shoe, on accident, but both of them nearly fell forward.

“Watch it!” Lance hissed, wincing as Keith pulled him upright, “And that one’s not even the best one _here,_ it was just the coolest.”

That just invited a response, “So what _is_ the best one here?”

“Well, not _yours,_ ” Lance stalled, gazing around the hangar, “Probably a speeder. I mean, everything else is just bigger, and it’s nothing compared to…”

Keith said nothing, as Lance came to his grand realization.

“... the space bay itself,” Lance said.

“If that’s your answer, that’s cheating.”

“So you agree with me!” Lance elbowed him again, “I’m right, the place can fit as many clunky cruisers as you _want_ , so it has to be like, automatically, the best thing here-”

“Oh, shut it,” Keith said, without a bite, “That’s just the clever answer.”

“It _is_ the clever answer,” Lance said. He smiled wide, and even if Keith couldn’t see it, Lance hoped he heard it. “You should just admit it now, I’m more clever than you.”

Keith coughed, or maybe laughed, “Says the one who can’t make a decent comeback.”

“H-hey! I can make a decent comeback, I-” Lance froze, mid bad comeback, “Look. You think I’m _clever_ , just admit it.”

“No,” Keith said, laughing. Lance could feel the breath of his laugh on the back of his neck, and he tried to ignore what had to be goosebumps rising on his skin.

They continued bickering about ships in the bay, and they debated the particularly contentious ships that Lance deemed ugly or Keith deemed slow. Reluctantly, Lance would even label it as _nice_ or _entertaining_.

Eventually, though, the novelty of the space pirate bay wore off, as the rows seemed endless and the _Luck of the Draw_ nowhere in sight. Plus, as they wandered more and more into the bay, more and more pirates began to notice them.

Glancing over at the space pirates around them, each giving them suspicious looks, Lance continued rambling, this time out of nerves, “The ships are cool, but pirates were never really my thing. No one liked them. Pirates didn’t like them, uh, people who weren’t pirates didn’t like them-”

Keith poked him in the back again; maybe he’d gotten too loud again. Well, loud and _suspicious_ , as Keith had seemed to enjoy Lance’s earlier rambling.

Lance understood the sentiment; the suspicious glares settled over them like fog, and Lance could only read the situation as very bad. Plus, Keith had gripped on to his arm again, and the pain hit him again like a jolt.

“-we should probably head out,” Lance said, keeping a level voice, “Just find a nice, tiny ship to steal and escape on-”

“We’re already here, we need to find our comms,” Keith said, sounding oddly reasonable. “Even if we want to get out, the best bet’s on finding the _Luck of the Draw_ to get our stuff so we can contact everyone else.”

That was an infuriatingly reasonable conclusion, mostly because that was what Lance himself had said earlier. Only, he hadn’t thought it through to the point of going back to the ship they were captured on.

He also hadn’t wanted his own advice to work against him, but that was his life. Truth to be told, Lance just wanted out of there, and with nothing to do with the aliens again, so he could nurse his injury in peace and quiet from the comfort of the castle. There was no way he was going to admit the injury, though, especially with being a burden hanging over him.

“Unless you have any other argument-” Keith started.

“- _no_ ,” Lance said, too quickly, “But if anything happens, it’s all your fault.”

Keith paused at that, and his hand on Lance’s arm tightened, only to continue moments later on their search for the _Luck of the Draw._

 

* * *

 

They found the ship not long after; Lance had been betting on getting caught again before finding the ship, so at least they wouldn’t have to see the pirates again, but the odds were never in his favor. At least if they got caught, he had a chance to convince Keith that they really, _really_ should just regroup.

“Is anyone looking at us?” Lance asked as they climbed into the ship; they had to abandon the pretense of prisoner-and-guard, as that made it even more difficult to climb on board in handcuffs.

Keith looked over his shoulder, “Not sure, but hurry up.”

With some jostling and shoving, both of them entered the ship. It wasn’t as big as Lance had remembered it, but maybe reeling in the size of the space bay had ruined his sense of scale.

The ship itself, while looking pristine and intimidating from the outside, held itself together at the seams. Wires twisted around mish-matched parts, keeping them in while cackling with unprotected electricity. It was a step below being held together with duct tape; there was no duct tape, or glue, or anything unnecessary binding it together, just luck and moving parts.

Lance shuddered, backing as much away from the live wires as he could.

Looking at the moving parts instead of the wires, Lance had doubt about Keith’s findings; if glanced at from the right angle, some of the parts could look like they were from Earth. Most didn’t, but there was such a variety of parts that some really _did._ The sheen would be off occasionally, or the shape, but with only a quick look and no double-take, they could be passable.

“Come on,” Keith said, and Lance realized he had been staring for too long. “They wouldn't have had time to install them- they should be with the rest of the cargo.”

Lance let out a breath between clenched teeth, “Sure.”

The cargo bay fared better than the entrance of the ship, in terms of possibility of electrocution. It still looked patchworked, with the wall lined in metal coatings in so many different sheens and colors, but at least no open wires threatened to shock them to death.

Spare parts lined the left wall, in various states of battery. Some looked like they’d fit in with the rest of the ship’s hazardous equipment, others like they’d been buried in a swamp for years. Keith had pulled Lance by the handcuff toward the scrapes, Lance reluctant and uninterested.

There was little doubt in his mind, at this point; Keith had been wrong. He had no idea how to prove it, but there was no way anything from Kerberos was here. Keith had been mistaken, or had gotten his hopes up too high, or something; it just wasn’t probable.

Something, in the back of his mind, said assuming Keith was wrong was actually the wrong judgement call. Lance tried to ignore that.

Still, Keith set down the guard’s shock staff and dug through the parts, pulling at Lance’s arm, even as Lance winced through the motion. Instead of tossing through the parts as Keith did, Lance gritted his teeth and looked at the other side of the ship for something interesting to look at.

A glimmer of red cloth caught his eye, and with a grin, he pulled Keith away from the cacophony of ship parts.

“Hey- what-” Keith protested, hands still gripping some alien gear, “All the parts are over _here-_ ”

Lance, picking up what he’d found, held it out in front of him and smirked, “Finder’s keepers!”

In between his fingers was Keith’s jacket, shiny and red and just out of Keith’s reach. Well- maybe not, as Lance couldn’t put much distance between them with the handcuff between them, but he had enough shock for Lance to have a head-start on shoving on a sleeve.

Keith balked, red in the face, as Lance triumphantly shimmied the sleeve of Keith’s jacket on his free arm. For the other, there wasn’t much he could do with the handcuff, so he threw it over his shoulder and called it a day.

Keith choked, dismay covering his face, but unable to respond. He didn’t look mad, Lance noted with some surprise, just dismayed and flustered.

The sleeves were warmer than Lance anticipated, and pockets heavier.

“What?” Lance said, “Mine’s not here- and you got the guard outfit! I need to have _something."_

Keith didn’t have the chance to protest, as something knocked on the side of the ship, startling both of them.

Not this again; Lance wasn’t going to give Keith the chance to charge in guns blazing. And despite the seed of doubt planted by Keith’s doubt in _him,_ he was willing to bet running out of a pirate’s ship was better than getting caught red-handed in it.

“I haven’t looked at everything-” Keith started, and Lance couldn’t bring himself to care. He grabbed Keith by the hand, the shock staff in the other, and barrelled out of the ship as fast as his legs could take him.

His legs couldn’t take him very far. They got to the entrance, surrounded by live wires and other death traps, when the pirates found them.  

While the ship had looked less intimidating the second time around, the pirates only looked more intimidating. Lance had recognized them as vaguely humanoid when he saw them at first, from a distance, but up close vaguely humanoid was only the beginning.

Maybe he wasn’t used to the whole alien thing yet, but maybe he would never be used to seeing something he _thought_ looked like a human have actual claws on her hands and thin, leathery skin like a bat.

“ _You_ again?” said one of the pirates, the one Keith had argued with in the first place. She pointed at Keith, “How did you even _get_ here?”

The other pirate next to her placed a hand on the other’s arm, pulling it down. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “They’re not getting out of here.”

She grabbed for a knife, or a saber, or something intimidating and pointy. Keith backed into a fighting stance, fists in front of him and gesturing at Lance’s- Keith’s- jacket.

“Where did you find those parts, where _are they_?” Keith yelled, even as he held no weapon.

Not _this_ again, the same boiling anger and the same ignoring any kind of survival instinct.

Lance could feel the panic set in; Keith was still talking, but Lance could only feel the electricity in the live wires cackle, his arm aching again and more than ever, and his tiny, rabbit heart beating out of his chest.

“-Lance! My bayard- it’s in your pocket,” Lance recognized Keith speaking, and then he recognized the alien stepping toward them, knife slashing by.

Both of them barely dodged, Lance by a hair; Keith was yelling again, but Lance looked to the door, then pulled Keith by the hand. Shoving Keith as much out the door as possible, much to his protests, Lance turned around.

Gripping the shock staff in his hands like a javelin, Lance had no idea how to use it, nor did he want to. Instead, he lobbed it toward the wall, jamming it in the open wires. He could hear the cackling again, louder, and he knew it wasn’t just his misplaced focus this time.

Then, Lance grabbed Keith by the hand, and threw them both out the door.

They both skid across the sheemy surface of the ship and onto the ground, in a tumble of limbs. Picking himself up as fast as he could, Lance continued running, gripping Keith’s hand with an iron fist.

Lance didn’t look back, but he could hear the explosion of the _Luck of the Draw_ , and feel the heat behind him. Keith looked back, and Lance could tell, since he stalled.

“What are you doing-” Keith yelled, running along with Lance but slowing down and clearly not enjoying a minute of it.

“What am _I_ doing? What are _you_ doing! We don’t have any weapons-”

“-if you just looked in your- _my-_ pocket-”

“You know what, I don’t care,” Lance said, hiding behind the cover of a ship. They needed to get out of there, fast; even if the aliens hadn’t survived the explosion, _someone_ would be after them after that, and Lance didn’t want to stay there to find out who it’d be.

Keith pulled Lance over by his shoulder, his _bad_ shoulder, and Lance choked. Whatever lectured words Keith had prepared died.

“Your shoulder’s wrecked, isn’t it? I _knew_ you’d been lying,” he said, tearing his hand from Lance’s shoulder. His wince-frown was back, replacing his scowl, and Lance had had enough of his pity.

“I’m _fine,_ ” Lance backed into the ship, jamming his shoulder again. The groan he made didn’t help his point, but he tried to make it regardless, “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?” Keith said, “You’re _injured._ ”

“I can take care of myself!” Lance said, bristling; he pulled himself away from the ship, only to fall back again.

“I know that!” Keith had moved his hands for emphasis, but only his left, to not jostle the handcuff, “You just blew up a pirate ship! With a _stick._ ”

Lance paused, gaping at Keith in surprise; this clearly contradicted the whole basis of his hide-his-injury motivation. Maybe Keith hadn’t actually been reluctantly dragging him along on this whole thing; he figured the only reason they hadn’t split up was the handcuff link, or else Keith would’ve ditched him at the nearest chance.

“W-well, what about being stuck with me, huh?” Lance said, poking Keith in the chest, “You really weren’t up for me tagging along at all!”

Keith stared at him, realization dawning on his face.

“Sorry,” Keith said. It surprised them both, Keith looking away and Lance looking wide-eyed.

“It wasn’t that, I... almost got you _killed_ ,” said Keith, “I didn’t mean that you were… I should’ve listened to you earlier and we wouldn’t be in this mess _._ ”

It sounded weird to hear Keith apologize, and Lance just blinked back at Keith’s face looking for something there. Maybe his wince-scowl wasn’t pity, as Lance had suspected, but concern. That, and _guilt,_ for getting both of them stuck here and electrocuted.

“I don’t want you to get injured even _more_ ,” Keith had started again, pausing to find words as Lance stared.  

It wasn’t that Keith felt Lance was holding him back; okay, maybe Lance did hold him back from trouble, but it wasn’t that he was a burden. Instead, the worry came from the very same place that had gotten Lance into this mess in the first place.

“You’re concerned,” Lance said, revelation dawning on him.

Keith looked very much like he thought this was obvious.

“About me,” Lance continued. “You’re concerned about me.”

“You got knocked out, then electrocuted, and you _can’t move your arm,_ ” Keith said, now embarrassed. “Of course I’m concerned.”

“Oh man, this whole time I thought you were doing this I’m better than you schtick,” Lance said, laughing and slightly delirious. “But you’re just worried about me. You actually care!”

Keith wasn’t looking him in the eye anymore, instead covering his face with his free hand, looking positively mortified at Lance, or maybe at himself. He didn’t even try to counter Lance, he just stared at a place left of Lance’s head, ears red. His face was probably red, too, but it was covered enough to hide that.

Everything felt fuzzy, but Lance laughed again, not really following the trajectory of Keith’s current embarrassment, “Hey, it’s fine- that’s why I’m here too, to make sure you didn’t go off and get yourself killed.”

Keith finally met Lance’s eyes, his own wide in realization. He opened his mouth to say something, but the moment broke as something flashed over them and hit the ship behind them. The metallic planking melted off its siding, dripping on the floor of the hanger.

Craning his head behind him, Keith said, “They’re kind of persistent.”

“They’re _pirates_ ,” Lance said. “And we just _blew up their ship._

Both of them stared at each other, and the ship they hid behind shook behind them.

Lance let out a long breath, leaning on the hull of the ship, “We need a ship to get out of here.”

Keith gave him a long look, then nodded. Both of them still hunkered behind the current ship, but it wouldn’t last long; it already teetered, and they didn’t even know how far behind the pirates were.

“I just say we run,” Lance said, “Very fast, in another direction, until we find some speeder with the keys in the ignition.”

The pirates shot the hull of the ship again, and it creaked menacingly.

Keith grabbed his hand this time, tearing away from the ship as it creaked and fell, metallic cling reverberating off the ground. Whatever ground they made when Lance blew up the _Luck of the Draw_ had been lost.

Running through the ships the second time was much less glamorous than the first. Instead of focusing on, well, _cool ships,_ Lance tried to spot feasibly-driveable and unlocked ships that would take them in the general direction of away.

Most had too many pirates at hand, washing or fixing their ships. Despite the firefight, they looked pretty unphased by the commotion, glancing over just to shrug and turn back. Typical pirate bay shenanigans. Other ships didn’t have a visible opening, some were too small, some looked like they’d fall apart at a gust of wind, much less a laser gun.

One stood out, though; it looked larger than a speeder, with a decent sized cockpit open to the air.

“ _That one-_ convertible, on your left-” Lance yelled, pointing wildly in its general direction.

Keith switched directions, toward the speeder, “I’m driving.”

“I can still drive!”

“You have one functioning hand!”

“My hand’s fine, the shoulder’s messed up! I mean, you’re holding it right now!”

Keith pulled on Lance’s arm, and Lance winced; point taken.

The two of them climbed into the speeder and searched for a way to turn the thing on, with Lance reluctantly taking what he assumed to be the passenger side of the vehicle. He knew when he was beat, but that didn’t mean he would go down without a fight, or at least a fit, “I can take off my boot- it’ll be fine, I’ve driven with my foot before in the flight simulators! With _both_ my feet once, it worked out- kind of-”

Keith paused for a pointed look of exasperation, then continued pushing all the buttons he could until the speeder revved to life.

 

* * *

 

Lance had forgotten how chaotic Keith’s flying was; sure, they didn’t _crash_ , but it still made for a terrifying experience, always on the edge of destruction but never falling over it. At least when Lance approached the edge of destruction he actually fell over it, instead of teasing over the line endlessly. Keith knew the exact moment where a close call became a bad one, and Lance would appreciate it, maybe even admire it, if he didn’t feel like he was about to die every turn.

Neither of them knew where to go. Lance just pointed and yelled directions, and Keith would steer, barrelling through pirates and guards and anyone in the way. The inside of the hangar was huge, stories high, with an empty center, which mostly meant they flew a whole lot of nowhere.

For a while they had escaped the pirates; there wasn’t much two bat-aliens could do on foot to a speeder. However, there also wasn’t much either Lance or Keith could do without a sense of direction.

Lance craned his neck behind the speeder again, surveying the hangar. The hangar escape routes outside the bay were all closed- maybe there was some kind of emergency protocol here- and while some of the pirates had ignored them earlier, they certainly weren’t _now._  

Especially since, by the looks of it, the space pirates they were running from had _also_ stolen a ship.

“Uh, Keith,” Lance said, as something he could only describe as an electric cannonball flew over them, “We have a problem.”

The cannon shot crashed into the wall in front of them, splattering the ground with sparks and reverberating electricity. Keith turned the speeder around, just in time, to skid over the sparks, and barrel in a new direction. Lance hid behind the dash, watching the sparks fly behind the safety of the dashboard window.

“Think of a solution!” Keith yelled. “And an exit- I’m flying, here-”

That was a lot of pressure, but the giddy feeling of being trusted trumped the pressure. Lance turned in every direction to search for _something,_ looking like a confused meerkat. Peering into Keith’s side of the speeder, he pointed with his left hand and yelled, “Gun! Keith, give me that gun.”

Despite being the one to suggest finding a plan, Keith gave him an incredulous look, “Aren’t you _right handed?_ ”

“Yes, that’s a technicality I’ll have to figure out-” Lance said, reaching over Keith’s seat, “Give me the gun!”

Keith swatted Lance away, grabbing the gun with his un-handcuffed hand, “You better know what you’re doing.”

“Of course I know what I’m doing,” Lance said, as he looked at the gun for the trigger. It was pretty close to the front of the gun, weird, and it didn’t look like anything back on Earth, or even like his bayard. Weird, but he’d figure it out.

Twisting to look behind him again, he aimed and shot; the laser shot out the other side.

“Lance!” Keith yelled.

“That was intentional!” Lance yelled back as he turned the gun around. “I know what I’m doing! It was a test shot!”

His next shot was better; he aimed at one of the speeders following them, an unfortunate third party recruited into chasing them, and while it didn’t hit the thruster he’d intended, the blast was enough to shock the rider off.

“Did you see that-” Lance knocked his bad shoulder into Keith’s, not even caring about the jolt of pain. “Told you I could do it!”

Keith took the moment to make a particularly sharp turn, and Lance fell into his lap. Their arms tangled with the handcuff, and Lance wondered how Keith could even fly like this.

“I’m _flying_ , so no,” Keith said, looking down at Lance’s obnoxious grin, “Just figure out how to get out of here!”

Lance pulled himself up, smirk still plastered on his face, then aimed again. This time, he aimed for the bat alien’s stolen speeder, at the side of the foothold. It hit, dead on, and the pirate flew across the hangar, into another ship.

Lance whooped, knocking into Keith again, who at least laughed this time instead of shoving him away. It took Lance a moment to recover from the sound, not expecting it to sound so airy and _fond_.

“Told you, I told you so,” Lance laughed, turning away to look for the other pirate. By this point, they’d attracted even more unwanted attention; there was no way they were getting out of the hangar by flying, so they needed a new plan.

No way were they getting out by the elevator, either; it was too slow, no matter if they had the express pass or not, there was no way they’d be able to keep everyone in the hangar away long enough for the doors to closed.

Unless, of course, they didn’t enter the elevator from the hangar.

“I have a new plan,” Lance said, before he had a complete plan, “They’ve gotta have trash chutes here, right?”

Keith took a break from his concentration on flying to give Lance a disbelieving look, “Please tell me you aren’t suggesting...”

Lance continued regardless, “We can take the elevator out if we get somewhere else! Then we just- figure out how to get out from there- we’ll be fine!”

Another speeder followed them, flanking them on their right. Keith ducked as the occupant took a fired at them. Lance aimed a shot over Keith’s head, hitting the ship square in the controls, and Keith turned into the ship. They watched as the pilot dove out of the ship, unable to veer out of the way.

Lance yelled again, but reluctantly refrained from bragging; instead, he scanned the hangar; despite all the ships being, well, ships that flew, tracks scattered the ground. Some of them lead to dump truck looking machines, backs filled with scraps and other useless junk. The tracks, then; the must  leading to what Lance could only assume was the way to the trash chute, or at least to something _out_.

“Follow the tracks!” Lance yelled, “Follow the tracks- that’s our way out of here!”

Despite Keith’s earlier protests about the trash chute idea, he followed anyway, making the tightest u-turn Lance had the misfortune of witnessing, before speeding across the tracks.

Unfortunately, the last pirate of the _Luck of the Draw_ standing was now directly in front of them, and approaching fast, gun drawn and shooting.

A jousting match, but with guns instead of lances and speeders instead of horses; Lance could deal with this.

“Okay, you _have_ to see this one,” Lance said, “You’re not going to miss this-”

“Hurry up,” Keith yelled, “Or you _missing_ will be the last thing I ever see!”

Lance aimed, picking the best target- the back thruster, enough to unbalance the speeder out of their way- and shot. The pirate didn’t have a chance to aim or shoot, her speeder careening out of control. Keith dodged the unbalanced ship on the turn of a dime, skidding back on the tracks.

Lance whooped again, knocking into Keith as he turned around to watch the speeder spin out of control.

“You saw it that time,” Lance said. “Admit it, that was cool, and I’m the best, right?”

Turning toward Keith, he was surprised to find Keith was already looking at him, grin plastered on his face. Lance smiled wide, posing the best he could with his alien gun, elbow resting on the dash of the speeder and gun posed over his shoulder.

Keith turned away, red and trying to hide his own grin, “You’re infuriating.”

Lance had been right; the tracks did lead to a trash chute, of sorts. It wasn’t the chute he’d imagined- he thought, maybe, it’d be circular and only wide enough to fall down- but instead, large enough to hold a speeder.

“We can fly down there, can’t we?” Lance asked as they approached. Keith had slowed down, evidently disagreeing with him.

“Maybe,” Keith said. “But they’d just chase us down there.”

“They’re just going to chase us down there _anyway_ -” Lance argued. The speeder had already stopped, Keith stopped it just outside the chute in the most commercial-worthy parallel park.

Keith didn’t take the bait, instead motioning for Lance to follow. Not wanting to get tugged by the handcuff, Lance followed, huffing as he went.

“I think we should blow it up,” Keith said, pointing to the ship.

Lance stared at the beautiful ship in front of them, “Um.”

“If we do, they’ll think we’re probably dead.”

That would actually work; after all, Lance had assumed when he blew up the _Luck of the Draw_ he’d stopped the pirate’s onslaught. It should work that they’d assume the same.

“Okay,” Lance said, and Keith smiled. Turning away, Lance added quickly, “As long as I get to blow it up.”

Keith opened his mouth for a comment, then just shook his head, motioning toward the ship. “Go ahead.”

Moving away from the speeder and as close to the chute as possible, Lance aimed his gun at the fuel tank of the ship. It wasn’t hard to find, but he really hoped banging the speeder around the hangar had hurt it enough for this to work.

“On the count of three, we go down the chute.”

Lance licked his lips, then counted down instead of up as he’d planned, “Three, two, one-”

As soon as Lance took the shot, Keith had pulled him down, into the trash chute behind them. He could hear the explosion above them as they slid down, but could only see it in the bright reflections on the walls of the chute.

 

* * *

 

At least Lance was right about where the chute headed; he was a bit off on how easy the fall would be, though. They skid across the chute and before either of them could see it coming, the ground was below them, pointy and filled with junk. They landed in a pile of scraps, which Lance should have seen coming, really, and it wasn’t exactly comfortable.

Keith, beside him, groaned, and Lance would assume if he was alive enough to groan, he was alive enough for Lance not to worry about him for the moment.

Lance tried to move, but everything hurt, his shoulder most of all. At the least, he could still wiggle his fingers, even if even that much movement hurt terribly. He didn’t even want to try moving anything more, and instead tried to pretend the scrap pile was comfortable.

After a moment, Lance figured he should probe how alive Keith was.

“How’s that for a bonding moment,” Lance said, as a gauge if Keith was alive or not.

“Mfffrgh,” said Keith in response. “Painful.”

So he was alive. Silence fell between them, until Keith said, quieter, “You won’t forget this one, will you?”

“Nah,” Lance said.

Lance could hear Keith shift, probably to look at him, and he didn’t know what to make of that.

“Yeah?” Keith said, the same tone of voice, but almost hopeful.

Lance panicked; he was probably reading this whole interaction wrong.

“So many cool ships,” he covered.

And the moment broke. Keith groaned again, this time exasperated instead of in pain,  “Why do you always ruin the moment.”

“Every single time you actually say something _meaningful_ ,” Keith continued; Lance could feel him lift his arms, “You just…”

Keith never finished his sentence, instead dropping his arm to the ground in defeat.

Maybe, Lance hadn’t read it wrong, but he wasn’t willing to test those waters right now. He wasn’t willing to test much of anything right now. Instead, he gave the best response he could, a weak laugh.

After what felt like only a few minutes later, Keith moved and in turn moved Lance’s shoulder. Protesting the movement, Lance tried to pull away, which just made it worse.

While the electrical burn on his arm hurt earlier, it seemed tenfold the pain now. Maybe he’d knocked it on the way down the trash chute, or landed on it wrong, but now instead of a dull, numb pain, it throbbed.

“Five more minutes,” Lance said. “Let me lie here for five more minutes.”

“It’s been thirty,” Keith responded; at least he’d stopped moving. “Are you…?”

“Okay?” Lance said, sucking in a breath, “Probably not. I don’t think I’ve broken anything, but I haven’t looked into it much.”

When Keith moved again, it was careful enough that he didn’t jostle Lance’s arm again. Lance looked up blearily at him, slowly accepting the fact he’d have to get up pretty soon.

Keith kneeled over him, poking at Lance’s arm lightly and wincing.

“If you tell me not to look at it,” Lance started, “I will, one hundred percent, look at it. I do it every time. It just makes things worse.”

“It doesn’t look bad,” Keith said, pulling at Lance’s sleeve. He winced again, looked at Lance’s face for a moment, then pulled the sleeve back down.

“Don’t say anything,” Lance groaned. “For your own sake, don’t say anything.”

To his credit, Keith didn’t. Instead, he sat down next to Lance, carefully. Knowing he’d have to get up eventually, Lance pushed himself up to a sitting position with his good arm, and surveyed the junk yard.

It certainly _was_ a junk yard, trash and spare parts intermingled in an awful mess. At least they had landed in the the spare parts section, and not the food waste section, though Lance could smell it from over here.

There was still so much _stuff._ While he’d been curious by the selection on the _Luck of the Draw_ , the ship had nothing on what was here. Maybe it had a more refined selection- the swamp parts outweighed the functioning ones- but by quantity of quality, the junkyard and the pirates beat, big time.

“Lance,” Keith said, and Lance stopped gaping at the junkyard, “Look in your pocket.”

Of course; Keith’s jacket. Lance had forgotten all about it as they’d run. Luckily, it somehow managed to stay on his shoulder, despite running for his life. He dug in the pocket, pulling out Keith’s bayard, and, surprisingly, his communicator.

“We should get out of here,” Keith said, “We can contact everyone else now.”

Lance stared at Keith; they still hadn’t found what he was looking for, at all, but he’d finally agreed to just get out. Lance almost felt relieved.

Almost.

He hadn’t believed that Keith really found parts from the Kerberos mission. Not completely, at the least; Keith was wrong about _something,_ but that didn’t mean he was wrong about _everything,_ no matter how much Lance wanted that to be the case.

While Lance wanted to be right, he also knew that maybe, there were things Keith could be _more right_ about, and weird instincts were one of those things. No matter how many bad feelings he had all day, he didn’t completely bury the idea that Keith had found something from Earth. Maybe he was just curious, at first, about what Keith really found, or maybe he just really wanted to prove him wrong. But there was no way he’d still be here if there wasn’t a chance Keith was at least partially right, and that he trusted that chance more than anything else.

“We should look around first,” Lance said, looking at the junk piles and away from Keith. “That insect dude said the pirates were here earlier, we might be able to find the parts.”

“What?” Keith started, staring at Lance with wide eyes. “You’ve been telling me to get out of here this whole _time_ -”

Lance interrupted, “I mean, we’re _here-_ ”

“-you don’t think anything _is_ here, and you know it-” Keith continued anyway, voice raising.

“I don’t, but _you_ do!” Lance said, “Don’t tell me you _don’t_ , you’ve been chasing after these pirates this whole time-”

“You don’t have to humor me,” Keith snapped back.

“That’s not what I’m saying!”

Both of them stared at each other, now, and Lance sighed, “I still don’t think there’s anything from the Kerberos mission here, but you do.”

“And I still think you’re _wrong,_ but,” Lance paused, watching Keith’s expression carefully, “You might not be completely wrong?”

Keith looked caught between being annoyed and flattered, “That’s the worst vote of confidence I’ve ever heard.”

“I mean,” Lance said, looking away again, “I trust you?”

Keith had no response, or reaction, at least no reaction Lance could see.

“And it’s not like we’re in a rush,” Lance continued, ignoring Keith and waving his arms around. Keith’s handcuffed arm trailed along with his own, bonelessly.  “No one’s here, the pirates think we’re kind of dead, at least for now, and if we don’t find anything we just call everyone up.”

Keith still hadn’t responded.

“And if we _do_ find the parts, we comm everyone, tell them what’s going on, and get out of here, fight the pirates another day, and it’s not like sorting through junk will be that hard-” Lance stopped mid-sentence as Keith placed a hand on his shoulder.

Lance turned to Keith, who looked as embarrassed as Lance felt.

“Thanks,” said Keith, and that was that.

 

* * *

 

There was a lot to search; Lance had underestimated how _much_ there was to search. As much as he did think Keith was on to something, the sentiment might not stay after combing through piles and piles of space junk.

Most of it was junk; bits and bobs of gears, shells of thrusters with cracked edges, long tangled wires that never seemed to end. Lance even found half a mechanical hand, which scared him half to death as it stuck out of the junk pile, menacingly imitating a real robot, or cyborg, or something. He threw it to the bottom of the pile, watching it clatter on its way down.

Still, he kept searching, even when Keith brought up that they’d been at it for at least an hour. There had to be something under the junk; it wasn’t on the pirate’s ship, so it had to be here.

Lance knew this wasn’t quite right- they could have traded it, threw it away, used it for ransom- but he wasn’t going to give up _now._

Their persistence paid off, eventually. Lance had taken to lobbing any junk junk at the nearest pile, and as his latest piece clunked to the ground, it unveiled a familiar, orange sheen.

“Keith,” Lance said, “Keith- I think that’s it!”

It looked passably from Earth, but by the way Keith nearly fell of the junk hill, it had to be it.

It was a struggle to keep their footing as they walked down the junk hill, both of them wanting to look at the part as fast as possible but needing to keep together as not to fall down. They managed, barely, and Lance picked up the part as quickly as he could.

Turning it over in his hands, it was definitely a thruster from Earth. There was no mistaking it- even part of the Garrison logo was painted on the side, the orange sheen Lance had seen from the opposite hill. It looked as new as Keith had claimed it was, too, bright paint barely chipping off.

“That’s it,” Keith said; Lance almost forgot he was there. “That’s what they were selling.”

Both of them stared at the piece, Lance still holding on to it with shaking hands.

“You’re obsessive enough to know the identification of the Kerberos ship, right?” Lance said, prying at a loose screw with his fingers. “The Garrison label pretty much everything. It should be obvious what ship it’s from.”

Keith paused, “Maybe if you read the number to me, I could tell.”

“Eh, that’ll do,” Lance said. Tearing the screw out, he clawed at the underside shell of the thruster until it fell off, clanking to the floor. Lance picked it up, dusted off the back, and peered around for identification.

“Here it is!” Lance said, excited and speaking before he finished reading the entire number, “Identification number, F-S-0...”

Lance froze, staring at the rest of the number; that couldn’t be right. He scrubbed at it, cleaning off any grime with his fingernails, but the number remained the same. Flipping the shell back to its front, trying to find any other number or feature on it that told him his creeping fear was wrong.

“-ance? Lance- that’s a fighter class number,” Keith said, or _had_ been saying, but Lance wasn’t listening. “It’s probably just space debris picked up from an old escort mission- a lot of those turned out badly-”

“Its… its identification number is FS08-4176,” Lance cut Keith off.

Keith didn’t seem to understand the gravity of this, so Lance continued on,  “This isn’t- this doesn’t make sense- oh-eights were _just_ released, they couldn’t have been out of our _solar system_ as space junk."

Lance swallowed thickly; the shell shook between his fingers, and not from excitement. He couldn’t even see the number anymore. Still, he stared at the shell instead of looking to Keith, as if its number would change if he looked away.

Of _course_ the Earth parts weren’t from the Kerberos mission; he’d been doubting it all day. Both he and Keith were right, here, Lance realized with a pit of dread in his stomach. Keith was right that this was some new part, something important; Lance, that even if it was, it wasn’t from Kerberos. And Lance could deal with finding out nothing, or finding out Kerberos information and losing it, but this-

“Lance- how new _is_ this piece-” Keith started.

Lance ignored him, his mind whirled a million miles a minute, trying to figure out the worst case and the best case scenarios. He kept stalling at the fact that, undeniably, Earth- _home-_ could be in danger, and the ones who could defend it were lollygagging on a space base on the opposite side of the galaxy, with their only clues to what was going on was a broken ship and some useless identification numbers.

It could be a failed escort mission, out of bounds and just-so-happening to get caught by aliens, or another mission on the edge of the solar system going wrong just as Kerberos had, or a full-out attack. They had no way of knowing where this came from, other than it was here, and new, and undeniably important.

“This doesn’t make sense,” Lance said, even though it did. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

If he twisted the shell in the right light, the reflection would make the eight look like a six; at another angle it looked like a three. But moving it even slightly would ruin the illusion.

He wanted immediate resolution- he wanted to go find the space pirates on this goliath of a ship who knew where this _came from_ , so he didn’t have to wait to figure out how the parts got here. And that wasn’t a good plan at all.

Lance knew any decision to solve this mystery _now_ would be a bad idea. He’d been dragging Keith away from impulsive ideas all day, and managed to be successful minus a few injuries, a few _major_ injuries, but now he had to swallow the urge to ignore every warning and plan he’d made.

He just wasn’t sure how much he could keep up being Keith’s impulse control, since he really, _really_ didn’t want to.

Keith had taken the part from Lance’s hands, twisting it around himself. Lance couldn’t read his expression, hidden behind the shell, but he could guess. He’d seen the same determined look all day, steadfast in his convictions and unfortunately correct in his instincts.

“This is bad,” Lance said, to no response, “This is really, _really,_ bad.”

And really, really bad was probably the understatement of the year. Lance watched Keith, now, and sure enough, when Lance could see him behind the shell, he wore his dead set expression.

“We can figure out what to do about Earth once we get out of here,” Keith said.

That wasn’t what Lance had anticipated at _all,_ and it threw him more of guard than if Keith had run off to find the space pirates again.

“What?” Lance paused; he hadn’t really meant to say that, or disagree, as that’s what he really should want; Keith agreeing to escape, “I mean, no kidding, but- you don’t even _want_ to find the pirates?”

“Of course I do!” Keith yelled, “That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea!”

“Sorry- I-” Lance stopped- maybe he hadn’t wanted to just get out of here as much as he’d thought, “I know we shouldn't- that we can't- but…”

Lance trailed off, trying to find the words to describe how _terrified_ he was. Then, he swallowed, thickly, hoping he didn’t look as upset as he felt, “It’s home, and I...”

Silence, again. Silence except for Lance’s own pitiful sniffling.

This wasn’t fair. They’d been tracking answers all day hoping for a clue of good news. Something to where Pidge’s family could be, something that Shiro could recognize and remember with. Instead, they got _this,_ more questions than answers, and what answers they had only hinted at something horrifying.

“This is really messing me up, here,” Lance admitted, rubbing at the bottom of his nose, then under his eyes. “I didn’t think that…”

“Lance, I...” Keith said, looking conflicted and- Lance could recognize it now- concerned. After a pause, he hugged Lance, one arm around Lance’s shoulder while the other hung loosely at his side.

It was the first time the handcuffs meant that they couldn't be closer in proximity, instead of further away. There was no way to wrap both arms around Keith, and Lance, inexplicably, hated that.

Since really, it wasn't a great hug. This wasn’t even Lance trying to deny appreciating it, since he did, but it being a bad hug was more of an objective fact. Keith was probably new to this hugging thing; he awkwardly patted Lance’s back too hard, and didn't even try to say anything. Still, Lance gripped the back of Keith’s shirt as much as he could, guard fabric flimsy between his fingers.

“Ugh,” Lance said, eventually. “You’re really bad at this. Like, really, really bad. You’re as stiff as a board-”

“Lance, shut up,” Keith cut Lance off, but hugged him tighter.

Whatever urge to figure out answers _now_ had quelled, at least slightly. Lance sniffed again, his forehead leaning on Keith’s shoulder as he slouched into the hug. No, they couldn’t figure out answers now, but Lance had little doubt that after they got out of this, he and Keith and everyone else could find their answers later.

It wasn’t the most reassuring thought, but it was better than anything Lance had been thinking before.

 

* * *

 

Neither of them said much, after that. Only once the hug broke, and Lance had calmed down, somewhat, then paced back and forth and drag Keith along with him, did Lance start talking again.

“We probably should figure out what we’ll say to everyone once we turn on the comm,” Lance said. “Hey, Shiro, sorry, we got captured by space pirates just as Allura told us not to-”

“-technically she never mentioned anything about pirates,” Keith said.

Lance paused, almost smiling, then continued pacing.

“I think pirates falls under rule, uh, two, don’t get into trouble, Keith, I don’t think anyone would listen to a _technicality_ ,” Lance said. “I’d only listen to a technicality if it was in my favor.”

Keith finally paced with him, fiddling with the communicator between his hands.

“Maybe we should lead with the worse news first. Horrible news, bad news, we’re still alive news.”

“I’m turning it on,” Keith said.

Lance tried to grab the communicator as it whizzed to life, “Hey- hey! We don’t have a script yet!”

Both of them stared at the communicator between them, light static playing. Keith was the first to speak, pressing down on button, “Can anyone hear me?”

They got a response seconds later.

“Keith?!” came Hunk’s voice from the communicator, “Keith- where the- where are you?! Is Lance with you?”

“I’m right _here_ ,” Lance said, pulling the device toward himself, “Jeez.”

Despite his cranky remark, his shoulders sagged in relief.

“Lance! Oh man, we thought you were a goner,” Hunk continued. “Some pirates tried to get us to pay ransom for you two, and they gave us your stuff for proof.”

That explained a lot. At least, it explained why Lance’s jacket was nowhere to be found.

Pidge cut in, “Yeah, everything except the comm.”

Now _that_ made absolutely no sense to Lance- why would they take his comm and not his bayard?- but he didn’t have time to question it, as Pidge interrupted his thought process, “Where _are_ you?”

Lance laughed, the moment they’d all been waiting for, surely, “In a junk pile, on a pirate ship bay?”

Reactions were as bad as he’d predicted.

“What!?” said Hunk, as Pidge just replied with a low groan.

“It doesn’t matter!” Lance said hurriedly.

Shiro spoke next, “Actually, if we want to find you, it does.”

Of course Shiro, the voice of reason, the awful, disappointed, voice of reason, had to bring that up.

“We’re on a ship, and it’s pretty big,” Keith said, before Lance could recover.

“The one that looks like a zeppelin?” Hunk asked.

Despite his earlier silence embarrassment, Lance said, “Yes! I thought that too, it looks like that from the inside-”

“Oh _man_ ,” Pidge said. “You guys are in big trouble, aren’t you?”

The silent embarrassment returned for both of them. Keith bit his lip, and Lance laughed awkwardly.

“We still don’t know how you two got there,” Shiro said, spotting their avoidance easily.

Both of them paused, neither wanting to say anything, but eventually Keith started, “Some of the pirates had ship parts that looked like they were from Earth, and I messed up-”

“-we messed up,” Lance cut him off, and Keith looked bewildered. “And got captured.”

Lance could her the indiscriminate groaning over the line. Keith stared at him, eyebrows furrowed and expression amusingly shocked.

“But that’s not important! The parts- they _were_ from Earth, and they’re _new_.”

“What?!” said Hunk, “You’re- you’re not serious, are you?”

Keith hadn’t spoken yet; he was staring straight at Lance, eyes wide, and it threw Lance off. Shaking his head, he continued, “Yeah, we found a thruster from an oh-eight. The original pirates had it on them and left it here, but...”

He paused, stomach sinking unpleasantly at the thought of trying to explain why they weren’t investigating _now._

“-we can’t really take them on right now,” Keith finally spoke up, recovering for Lance as he trailed off. “We just need an escape plan.”

The comm static slowed, as everyone on the other side of the line digested the information.

“I don’t think we can take on the ship itself,” Shiro said. “Is there any way you can get out?”

“We can probably get to the bridge,” Keith said, “By an elevator.”

Lance could almost hear Shiro’s nod, “We’ll meet you up there, in our lions.”

Something near the original chute site clanked, and Lance glanced over as Keith continued talking. Someone had thrown down a can, it looked like, and it rolled down the hill of junk, clambering on its way down.

After the can settled at the bottom of the hill, Lanced payed attention again.

“-the ship’s still in the lower atmosphere,” said Pidge. “And it’s storming out here, really bad. You’re going to have to be careful.”

“It’s fine,” Keith said, “The pirates think we’re dead-”

Something clattered, again, from behind them. Lance jerked his head in the direction, looking on in horror. On the top of the junk pile, stood the pirates, very much not thinking they were dead.

“Um,” Lance said, before he had anything substantial to say. “Or not?”

Keith shoved the communicator in his pocket, much to the protests of the team, then pulled Lance by the hand. Lance gaped at the pirates, wondering how they’d found them after _hours_ of them hunkering down in the junkyard.

“Elevator,” he said, “ _Now._ ”

The chaos of the junkyard worked in their favor. The pirates had to scale down the mountains of garbage, just as they had, while the two of them were already on solid ground. Instead of toppling down garbage, they skittered around piles of it.

Dodging laser shots, Keith pulled the two of them through the junkyard, side-stepping through falling debris. It wasn’t easy, and Lance kept craning his neck to see how much the pirates had gained on them.

At the elevator, Lance pressed the up button frantically, looking over his shoulder as the the aliens continued to shoot. Keith, beside him, readied his bayard; Lance wanted to yell at him to just wait until the elevator came _down_. Instead of using the sword to attack, however, he used it to deflect the shots.

Lance stared, mouth open, then continued to push the elevator call button.

The elevator was slow, horribly slow, Lance realized. While it didn’t matter earlier, it would matter now, with the pirates back after them. Just as Lance was about to suggest a backup plan, the enormous elevator doors swung open.

Keith clambered inside the elevator, right after Lance, leaning against the alcove of the wall for cover.

“Give me your badge-” Lance said, pawing at Keith’s uniform before finding what he needed. He slammed the badge on the control panel, then pressed the highest button on the list. The elevator dinged, and both Lance and Keith sagged in relief.

That is, until they noticed how slow the doors closed.

Keith peered out of the elevator door, sword in hands, as Lance searched the buttons on the wall for anything resembling a _close faster_ button.

“How did they even _find_ us?” Lance said, as he pushed what he assumed to be the close faster about ten times in the span of three seconds.

Keith, blocking one of the laser shots with the blade of his bayard, didn’t look away from the door, “How should I know!”

“We were there for _hours,_ it doesn’t- they just _had_ to come back as soon as we figured out a plan, we have the worst timing,” Lance continued. “Does this thing close any faster?!”

It didn’t; Lance hid behind the cover, his old gun long-gone and his bayard with the Team. His bayard, his shield, his jacket, everything except-

-everything except his comm. The pirates must have kept it, and if the pirates kept it, that meant as soon as they turned on the comm they’d been had.

“Keith!” Lance said, thoughts not fully formed. “Keith, I know how they found us-”

The realization was useless, until the doors closed and they were safe. As they did, Keith looked over at Lance, relief across his face. He looked as if he was about to laugh, his smile strained but open, and Lance couldn’t speak a word.

“So…?” Keith said.

Lance stared at Keith back, watching as his smile faded into confusion, and finally getting back to his senses.

“Oh, right, uh-” Lance spoke fast, trying to cover his own embarrassment, “Give me your comm- they have _mine_ , that’s how they found us.”

Keith nodded, already pulling out the comm from his jacket pocket.

It wasn’t any use. The elevator blocked any chatter over the device, the noise all static. There was no way to prove what Lance had said, but it didn’t seem to matter. Keith placed the comm back in the pocket of his guard uniform.

“So, now we just…” Keith trailed off.

“We just wait.”

The elevator chimed, finally at the second floor, of too many to count.

 

* * *

 

 

Lance hummed his own elevator music.

The tension of the pirates finding them again settled into an awful different kind of tension. It unsettled him; the fast-paced running he could deal with, but this stagnant feeling of dread he couldn’t. Lance thought, maybe, he could calm down and figure out a plan on this elevator ride of doom, but instead he fought the urge to pace.

“They know we’re going to be at the bridge,” Keith said, as the elevator chimed to three. “They heard our entire conversation.”

Lance stopped humming, biting the edge of his lip, “We’re walking into a trap.”

And the worst kind of trap, too. They couldn’t contact anyone from the elevator, the pirates knew they were coming, and if they tried to get out of the elevator, they’d be stuck in the pirate bay again, back where they started.

“We could always walk the plank instead.”

Tension broke as Lance laughed, even if it was a bit strained.

“You mean the space plank,” Lance said. Both of them knew they were still in the planet’s atmosphere, so it wasn’t technically true, but Keith didn’t protest it.

“I’m kind of serious. If we can’t outgun them- which we won’t since we only have a _sword_ \- and worse comes to worse, we just need off the ship,” Keith said. He had his look of steadfast determination that Lance wasn’t prepared for.

Lance frowned, trying to imagine the size of the ship, “Uh, you realize how _far the fall is_ -”

“-it’s a sloped fall, the ship’s a zeppelin, and we’ve been falling down things all _day,_ ” Keith interrupted, _“_ We just need to grab on, this time.”

It wasn’t the worst idea; if they got off the bridge fast enough, and the other paladins got there fast enough, they would escape before the pirates could even hit them. They’d need that, because as it was, they were sitting ducks in an elevator to the oven.

Lance swallowed, and rubbed his hand over his injured shoulder. He hadn’t investigated the injury himself, as to not confirm how bad it was, but he could feel the burnt skin now. It still hurt to touch, much less move, and there was no way he could hold on to much of anything.

“Keith, I don’t think I…” Lance started, “I don’t think I could grab on.”

Keith’s determined look remained, and he held up his handcuffed arm.

“I need to grab on, you don’t,” he said, “You just need to hang there for a while.”

Lance winced, hand still on his shoulder, “That’s gonna _hurt._ ”

“I know, but…” Keith said, his determined look fading into a deeper wince-frown. Concern, and maybe guilt, too. Lance thought it was guilt; even after finding out that Keith’s premonition _was_ right, he still felt bad about getting Lance hurt.

Lance really, really did not want to look at his injury now.

“As long as you hang on, it’s fine,” Lance said. “Really. I can handle it.”

Keith didn’t quite look like he believed him, but at least the concern passed, and he nodded.

“It’ll work, we’ll just,” Lance paused, scratching the back of his neck, “Fling ourselves off the ship. It’ll be fine. Shiro’ll kill us later but it’ll be fine.”

This was probably a bad plan. But it was the best bad plan they had.

“At least it’ll make the handcuffs useful,” Keith said, and Lance snorted. That wasn’t fully true- the handcuffs had kept them stuck together instead of splitting off- but Lance didn’t comment on that.

Instead, the tension in the elevator grew, again. Keith had stared at the door, hands clenching and unclenching in fists, as if preparing to grab on to the hull. Lance watched, unable to attract Keith away from the door and from mulling over the plan.

Lance resumed humming, even though Keith didn’t glare this time. He wasn’t even sure what song he hummed, something obnoxious he was sure, with plenty of repetition. The only pause in Keith’s movements or Lance’s humming were the occasional dings of the elevator, marking a new floor on their turtle ascent.

They were on floor ten. Lance needed to hear something other than his own humming, and Keith’s fidgeting.

“So,” Lance said, saying the first thing that came to mind, “We might be about to die.”

At least that startled Keith’s gaze away from the door. “Thanks for reminding me,” he grumbled, looking to the left of Lance’s head.

Silence fell between them, awkward instead of tense. That was honestly a relief.

Keith sighed, “Is this going anywhere…?”

“No- I mean, yes- it should go somewhere,” Lance said. “I mean, these could be my last words. We could die out there, we’re going to walk the plank. Into _space._ ”

“We have,” Keith paused, “Twelve floors to go. Knowing you, I don’t think these will be your last words.”

Lance considered being silent just to prove Keith wrong, but knew he couldn’t do that, “ _Those_ might be _yours_! You’ve been silent for ages! For like, three floors, you’ve just kind of stared at the door.”

“It’s not going to open soon,” Lance continued, “And when it does it’s just going to open _really, really_ slowly.”

Keith paused, but at least he looked to Lance, and not to the door. Lance fidgeted, shifting his weight from foot to foot, tempted to break the silence himself again.

Finally, Keith bit his bottom lip, and looked to the door, “Do you regret get caught up in this?”

That was more serious than Lance had anticipated; then again, he started this conversation with a question about their imminent demise. He really knew how to poke at the wasp’s nest.

“Not really,” Lance said.

Keith hadn’t looked back at him, and Lance elaborated, “Look… we found out something pretty important, told the team, so even if…”

Keith had turned back to him, and Lance couldn’t bring himself to say die again, not with this tone of conversation, so he made a weak, cutting motion across his neck.

“I don’t really regret getting stuck here with you,” Lance finished, now looking away himself.

To his surprise, Keith laughed, kind of. It sounded choked. “Me neither,” he said, smile small but honest. Lance smiled back, grin wide.

The moment passed, and for once, Lance let it.

The elevator raised more floors; the silence between them wasn’t tense, anymore, but maybe it was still anxious. At least Lance no longer felt like vibrating out of his skin, so he took anxious silence over the tense air of before.

Keith’s expression had changed into something Lance couldn’t quite parse. Nervous, maybe, by his wavering smile, or just plain conflicted. He looked like he had something to say, or something caught in his throat. His eyes stumped Lance the most, something between probing and _fond._

“Hey, Keith,” Lance said, watching for a change in expression.

Keith only swallowed, “Yeah?”

Giving Keith a watery smile, Lance said, “I was kind of pissed about being stuck with you at first, but…  I think we make a good team.”

Keith’s expression shifted, nervousness replaced by something else entirely, and before Lance could figure it out, Keith kissed him.

Lance kept his grip on Keith’s shoulder, fingers tight around the fabric of his sleeve. He didn’t want to admit it, but he hadn’t seen this coming and he had no idea what he was doing. Keith’s hand was on the back of his neck, his eyes had fluttered closed, and importantly, he was _kissing him._

Finally, Lance closed his eyes, trying to mimic Keith’s movements. He moved his hand to the side of Keith’s neck, and kissed back.

The moment broke when Lance fell back to the wall of the elevator, shoulder first, and he choked.

Keith broke the kiss, looking at Lance’s shoulder, then gentling moving him off the wall. His hand still rested on the back of Lance’s neck, and Lance was sure Keith could feel how flushed he was.

Staring at Keith with what he was _sure_ was the most shocked expression he’d ever worn, Lance noticed his hand was still at the nape of Keith’s neck, thumb nearly reaching Keith’s jawline.

“I like you,” Keith said, fast.

Lance blinked, expression otherwise unchanging.  

“Sometimes,” Keith added. “I like you, sometimes.”

“Um,” Lance moved his thumb in circles on Keith’s neck distractedly, “Sometimes?”

“You’re kind of infuriating.”

Lance stared; Keith stared back, grin lop-sided and teasing, but Lance took the bait, anyway.

“We just- you just _kissed me,_ ” Lance said, finally finding actual words again, “In an elevator, on a _pirate ship,_ as we’re riding to our _deaths_ , did you- did you really need to ruin the moment with _that.”_

“Mmm,” Keith said, “Yes.”

Again, Lance found himself at a loss for what to say. His face said something in itself- grin wide but eyes narrowed and eyebrows raised. He probably looked ridiculous, which was unfair, since Keith, instigator of all this, looked close to smug.

“You’re pretty embarrassed,” Keith said. It was hypocritical, really, as Keith looked flushed himself.

“I- I- that’s not even fair,” Lance whined. “You _kissed me._ We’re about to die and you kissed me- of course I’m- ugh! _”_

Saying it like that, Lance realized, it was probably a reasonable and unsurprising thing for Keith to do. It was the sort of thing people do before they died.

Lance did the only thing he could think of doing in revenge, and leaned forward to kiss Keith again. It wasn’t great, and objectively worse than Keith’s kiss. as he only hit Keith’s lips half-on and knocked his nose into Keith’s cheek. But he could feel Keith’s sharp intake of breath, and he relished in that.

They broke apart when the elevator chimed, marking two floors until the top.

“I like you too,” Lance said, when they reached the penultimate floor.

Keith smiled, then sighed and pressed his forehead to Lance’s shoulder.

“We have bad timing,” Keith said, and the elevator dinged to the final floor.

 

* * *

 

The door opening on the final floor could only be described as anti-climactic. The elevator hadn’t gone all the way to the bridge, instead stopping right before it. Ladders leading to hatches would bring them to the bridge, but it wouldn't be an easy climb.

“How do you climb a ladder with handcuffs?” Lance asked, staring up the thin ladder in front of them.

Keith looked around the tiny corridor, “Get another ladder?”

They found a rickety ladder, falling off one of the bridge hatches, and pulled it off the wall. After opening the hatch and placing the second ladder under it, with much difficulty, they managed to reach the top of the bridge.

Pidge hadn’t been exaggerating about the storm; Lance had been in his fair share of thunderstorms, but they didn’t really have anything on _this._ Wind billowed around the bridge of the ship, rain plastering down like a drape. The only light was the occasional flash of lightning, illuminating the surface of the bridge momentarily, darkness returning soon after.

“Hey,” Lance yelled. “I think there _is_ a space plank!”

There was; maybe it wasn’t meant to invoke the imagery of a plank, but it did, anyway. The ship’s bridge only had enough room for a thin strip of a walkway, multiple elevator hatches on either side, and long strips of ground extending perpendicular the center.

Lightning clashed again, in the clouds above them, illuminating them in a fluffy light. Lance winced, feeling the cackle of electricity around him. He swore his hair was beginning to stand on end.

No one had arrived, yet, other than them; no pirates, and no lions.

Lance looked over the edge of the ship; it was curved, as Keith had said, but the rain pouring down it would make grabbing handholds difficult.

“Another elevator’s coming,” Keith said.

Carefully, they walked the plank, crouching low to avoid being swept away. 

It was difficult, in the storm, but Lance could see a leather hand from the elevator gate opposite them.

Keith had readied his bayard, and Lance continued to crouch behind him, watching the hatches and prepared to shove them off if worst came to worse.

And it did- of course it did. Keith couldn’t hold off angry pirates with just a sword, especially with how much fire power they had, and Lance couldn’t do anything without a weapon at all.

“Lance-” Keith said, and there was no time for second guessing this plan.

Lance shoved, knocking them off the plank and down the side of the ship. This had to work- this _had_ to work- Lance just hoped either of them could get a hand-hold on the edge of the ship before the rollicked to their deaths.

However, the storm around them impeded Lance’s plan of clawing desperately at the hull of the ship; he couldn’t get a grip on anything, his fingernails scratch and his boots sliding but not a handhold found. He couldn’t see anything, either, the hull only lit dimly by lightning or the bright handcuff chain.

Luckily for him, Keith had a better chance; the handcuff between them pulling taut as Keith found a grip. Unluckily for him, he hadn’t had a grip on anything _else_ , only his handcuffed arm, and it pulled his shoulder more out of place than it already was.

“Lance?!” Keith screamed, over someone else- “Hold on-”

Lance couldn’t pay attention; pain jolted from his shoulder to his fingertips, and he wriggled them helplessly against the hull of the ship. He closed his eyes, blocking out what little light there was and trying to grab onto something with his other hand.

Before he could find another hand-hold, the pain ceased, the light went out, and Lance was relieved up until he realized all of this was because the handcuff chain had _broke._

Lance yelled again, or yelled louder, resuming his clawing as he fell, and luckily his reflexes were fast enough to catch on to Keith’s boot. His good shoulder jerked, but it wasn’t nearly as painful, and Lance tried to find a foothold. He thought he heard Keith yell something, but he wasn’t sure.

Wind screeched around them, and Lance closed his eyes, holding on to Keith’s boot and the ship as much as he could. Something lit up below them, but Lance kept his eyes closed, focusing on staying on the side of the ship as long as possible, and ignoring the throbbing in his arm.

“Lance,” Keith said above him; Lance didn’t respond, focus elsewhere, “Look down!”

“What, _what,_ ” Lance yelled back, focus easily distracted. “I’m trying- to hold on- your foot-”

“Look down,” Keith repeated, and despite his better judgement, Lance did.

The change in lighting should have cued him on to something; below, he could see two large, rectangular lights, illuminating a familiar yellow lion. Its jaw was opened below them, and Lance never thought he’d be relieved to be at the other end of a lion’s roar.

 

* * *

 

After the two of them scrambled into the lion’s cockpit, the first thing Keith said was “Do you have a medical kit in here?”

The first thing Lance had said was “Ughgh,” as he sat down on the floor.

“Yes, it’s in the back, but- okay, first of all, _what were you thinking,_ ” Hunk began. “Second of all, _what were you thinking._ You just… hung there!”

Lance pressed his cheek to the wall of the cockpit, trying to meet Keith’s eyes for a look of _he has no idea how long this day has been._ That, however, conflicted with his urge to never move again, so instead, he said, “Where’s Keith?”

“I’m finding the medical kit,” came Keith’s voice, from somewhere else, “It was a backup plan and it _worked._ ”

“Well, Shiro’s going to kill you-” Hunk started.

Lance snorted; he’d called that, earlier.

“-and how hurt _is he?”_

“I’m right _here_ ,” Lance said, “Don’t talk about me in the third person-”

“-pretty bad,” Keith responded over him, “His shoulder was already messed up before the fall.”

Lance could find Keith’s gaze, now, as he’d come back with the medical kit and leaned over him. He tried to smile, but Keith already focused on Lance’s shoulder, pained sympathy clear on his face.

“We should get him in the healing pod when we get back,” Keith said as he opened the medkit next to him, “Lance, keep still for a second-”

“I _am_ still,” Lance started, but stopped when Keith prodded at his shoulder, jerking away from the wall, “ _What are you doing stop that-”_

Hunk made a distressed noise from the cockpit, and Lance returned his face against the wall when Keith moved away.

“Sorry”, Keith said, wincing, “I don’t think I can do much with this, we should probably just… wait.”

It didn’t sound like Keith wanted to.

“Yeah,” Lance said. “We can figure that out later.”

And they had a lot to figure out later- what had happened to Earth, what would happen with enraging a band of pirates, what would happen with _them._ But Lance was perfectly content with putting that off, for the moment, and he was sure Keith was too.

They were fine. They’d escaped from the depths of a pirate prison cell, figured out Keith’s mystery ship parts, and somehow, flung themselves off a ship and didn’t splat on the ground. The rest of the details could be sorted out some other time.

Keith gripped Lance’s other shoulder, then leaned on his own hand. Lance could feel Keith’s hair on the side of his cheek.

“We’ll figure it out later,” Keith said, quieter. “It’ll be fine, Lance.”

Lance laughed, and it was the last thing he remembered before passing out.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m just excited this is finished and done with, honestly. For some tidbits, the original working title was “Turn Tables,” ala Michael Scott. I also had the line “Finding Keith’s space junk may have been biting off more than he could chew” written with no intention of innuendo, and… for someone who named her draft after Michael “that’s what she said” Scott it’s a damn shame I didn’t see that until the second pass.
> 
> I’m on tumblr at sinelanguage, and twitter at sine_tron. Thanks for reading!
> 
> edits on 1/22/2017: fixed formatting issues & 1-2 errors (I am so, so sorry I didn't fix those before, lol). 
> 
> Some art! Thanks so much for these. 
> 
> http://siriniel.tumblr.com/post/147144015392/quick-doodle-before-i-went-to-sleep-last-night  
> http://sinelanguage.tumblr.com/post/150141719770/klancefucker69-i-still-think-about-stormchasing  
> http://sinelanguage.tumblr.com/post/147663995630/obstinaterixatrix-please-read-stormchasing-by  
> http://sinelanguage.tumblr.com/post/156080337870/kantr-ok-so-redraw-of-this-which-is-fanart-for


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